Computers are great tools for music, when properly commanded they are extraordinary performers of musical instruments, they can also help us in the creation, production and analysis of music.
The Standard Music Notation (SMN) is one of the means used as an interface to communicate with them because it is the universally known and widely accepted notation system, however it is limited and laborious for this task since it evolved long before this technological era and was not intended at all for those purposes, on the other hand the languages such as CAL, encoding systems or files formats such as MIDI that have been created for computers and music are very powerful but unsuitable for human performance or the traditional musical practice.
The piano roll notation is widely used by computer sequencers to display and edit as-performed timing information in a graphical way but it is also unsuitable for human performance and lacks of theoretical support.
The Standard Music Notation is the result of several centuries of evolution, then intended to represent music based on exact-integer-ratio tuning concepts and diatonic scales; it has been an indissoluble part of the theory of music, together they followed and supported the then tuning standard as it struggled to develop, alone the way tuning system, notation and theory formed a perfect and solid braid that could not be broken or significantly modified by the time the battle for temperament ended.
As a result of that battle we have a theoretically simpler and ingeniously well-calculated tuning system, which was slowly assimilated, and treated as a modification of the fading system. This made possible that we could merge the new tuning system with the existing notation and theoretical support, and continue using them even when that harmony or concord with notation and theory do not exist with the twelve-tone equal temperament system (12-TET).
Consequentially we were forced to go on thinking of music through the theory and concepts created to support another tuning system, not with a proprietary one, we could go on this way for ever but the huge musical illiteracy and semi-literacy disproportion that we have today will also remain the same.
Or we could take advantage of the much simple concept of the current standard that would represent to music theory, music perception and in general to the musical practice the equivalent of what equal temperament did to performance in the fixed tone musical instruments many years ago.
We gave a solid forward step adopting the 12-TET as a standard, sacrificing a little bit of beauty to get a lot of functionality and thanks to technology we are ready for the next necessary step in the same direction and consolidate a complete proprietary system for the current tuning standard and the musical practice and music literacy could be for the masses.
There have been many proposals to modify the SMN focusing on the representation of music alone to make easier reading and playing by eliminating the so called unnecessary complications of the SMN; however there are also unnecessary complicated theoretical concepts related to those of representation when some notes are considered accidentals of another and they are not anymore.
It has almost been exhausted variants of the lines and spaces idea, using a variety of resources to represent sharps and flats but keeping the concept alive or do not provide a proprietary theoretical support.
Besides simplification for reading and playing, a modern notation system should also form a solid braid with a proprietary theoretical support for the 12-TET, so that we could have the possibility of completely get rid of unwanted and complicated legacy, it should exceed the possibilities of the SMN and be oriented to technology.
As language music belongs to everybody, so should be the possibility of literacy which is the right way to the musical practice, not necessarily as a profession, to achieve this, a complete alternative solution is not an option, it is the only way.